Against the Dying of the Light: A Mar'i Grayson Collection
by aggressivekinetic
Summary: Against the Dying of the Light is a collection of Mar'i Grayson oneshots I've done - they've been posted on Wattpad as aggressivekinetic and ao3 as MariGrayson. Mostly taking place in a post war Kingdom Come universe.
1. Do You Miss It?

"Do you miss Tamaran?" Her fingers curled around the mug and she settled back into the cushions, waiting for an answer.

Her mother took her time, mulling over her answer and waiting to give it like it was something precious that she couldn't trade away just yet. Her memories of Tamaran were mostly the memories of a child and only some of them were the memories of an adult, seeing the planet through different eyes.

"I do," she said, finally letting the words spill from her mouth as Mar'i waited for more. "There's so much I wish I could see again; I don't know where to start."

Mar'i took a sip from her mug and watched her mother as she became more comfortable. Setting her own mug down on the table behind her and pulling a blanket off of the back of the couch to spread it out over both of them, their legs disappearing under its folds.

"I think I miss our winters the most right now," Kory gave a smile. "It snowed on other parts of the planet but not where I lived. Tamarus was a tropical paradise." Her eyes became far away, looking at her daughter and yet, at the same time, not looking at her at all. "There were night blooming flowers that glowed in the dark and telepathic animals we called dragetts. I suppose they weren't unlike dragons with their wings and their snouts but they talked to us."

She sighed, her eyes crinkling at the memory. "They used to taunt my father to no end; your grandfather was an excessively clumsy man and he wasn't very good on a mount – he preferred to fly at all times – and he couldn't ever catch them."

"Catch them?" Mar'i raised a brow.

Kory shrugged. "We hunted them for sport only. The dragetts were let go if we caught them, never harmed. The games we played were for fun, there wasn't a need for violence against the creatures we lived in harmony with."

Mar'i nodded.

"I always miss my parents. They taught me how to fly, they were there when I went to train on Okaara, they never wanted to give me up but when it came to it they had to. We all went through so much." Kory had turned to stare out of the window, watching the snow fall in small flurries. "They would be astounded at Earth. The United States is so different from Tamaran; the industrial cities would baffle my father." She turned back to Mar'i, her eyes no longer far away. "They still baffle me and I've been here for almost twenty years now."

"What about them confuses you, Mom?" Mar'i's brow raised in a question. She had never known anything but Earth and its concrete sidewalks, some green poking between the cracks.

Kory shrugged. "Everything. There's parks here but you can pass by it and forget it's there as soon as you're beyond it. Nothing here is one with nature the way we were on Tamaran."

Mar'i took another sip from her mug and looked into it. "Do you think they would like me?" The fears she hadn't thought of since she was a child came to the surface and she tried to tell herself that they didn't matter. Tamaran was a destroyed planet, its denizens wandering the galaxy. She would likely never meet another Tamaranean. Her childhood fears were unfounded.

And yet, she still wondered.

"I know that I love you." Her mother's voice was low, almost a whisper. She reached across the couch to tip Mar'i's chin up with a delicate finger. Their eyes met, the similar hues connecting. "And that would have been enough."


	2. Finding Understanding

"I get it." Avia looked down at her hands, avoiding Mar'i's gaze for the first time in their friendship. She didn't want to know what she would find in her friend's eyes. She had known who Mar'i would choose before it had even come down to choosing between the two sides. "He's your grandfather."

She bit down on the inside of her cheek, her molars tugging at the soft skin. She didn't actually understand. Not really - but she wouldn't skewer her best friend ( one of her two ) for choosing the side of a grandfather she barely knew. Not out loud. Nothing would make it outside of the confines of her own mind. Besides, Mar'i had never had an overt fondness for Superman. The man who had disappeared before they could have any memory of the blue blur in the sky; Avia knew that Mar'i could never understand her father's admiration for a man that buckled under the weight of a death when Mar'i had made it out of her mother's death, stronger than she had been before. And angrier.

Mar'i studied Avia's figure. Her shoulders were taut, her fingers flexing, trying to keep from curling into fists. The tense lines of her body gave everything away.

"Do you really get it?" Mar'i's mouth was serious but not frowning and Avia didn't need to see her friend's face to know that her question would be tucked into the lines of her face.

Avia heaved a sigh before finally looking to Mar'i. "I know you don't really like Superman. That's really all I understand."

Mar'i shrugged and leaned back, looking on into the cosmos that surrounded her treehouse.

"I guess that's part of it." Her eyes flicked from one star to the next. "Then there's the thing with me and my dad. He never really let mom go." Then he had tried to make sure that he would never have to let Mar'i go either. Losing one parent was hard enough without the other needing constant confirmation of where she was, where she was going, who she was with, what she was doing. "I know he wants me to join Superman but I don't care, Avia, I want to get to know Bruce. I want to know what I missed out on and I don't want to be anywhere near my dad."

Avia nodded, her molars still chewing at her cheek. It was no secret that most of them ( the meta generation ) clashed with the heroes before them ( especially the legacies ) but she still respected her parents. Still knew that their choice was carefully thought out and that Superman seemed the safer choice for the two of them. Batman always seemed elusive to her; hard to trust and even harder to know. How could you join with a man you couldn't even come close to understanding?

Her hands gripped the edge of the cosmic treehouse, leaving dents in the metal.

She looked at Mar'i again, catching her friend in profile as her eyes roved over the constellations. "Just remember that you can't trust him, Mar. No one can trust that man."

Mar'i almost scoffed before she met Avia's eyes, the serious in them catching her off guard.

"You know I don't trust just anyone." She tried to shrug off the sudden uneasiness that had settled over her. "There's not really anyone you can trust these days. You and Randy, my cousins, my aunt." She gestured in the air. "Who else beyond that? No one. My mom is dead. I'm not about to trust a man I don't know, so don't worry about it."

"Stop being so dismissive, Mar'i." Avia sat back, turning away from her friend.

Mar'i shrugged. "I'm not being dismissive - it's the truth. I'm not going to put my life in Batman's hands just because he's my grandfather."

Avia sighed. "As long as you don't do something stupid, then."

"Do I ever?" Mar'i quirked a brow.

Avia answered with a shrug. "I could probably count out the incidents if you gave me enough time."

"Oh, shut up."


	3. It's Not the Same

"Hey - hand me the angel," Dick held out a hand as he climbed up the ladder, wobbling every so often as he tried to balance with one hand out and one hand on the steps.

Mar'i rolled her eyes and placed the tree topper in his hand. He'd refused her when she asked if he needed her to put it on top. She stood at six-foot-two, four inches taller than her father, and she could fly but he still refused to let her do it. Something about hurting his pride and needing to place it on top of the tree himself.

He'd told her he would only let her put it on top if he held her up, the same arrangement they'd had when she was little.

She'd refused.

"Alright - almost perfect," her father strained to get it to sit even on top of the too-tall tree that sat in the middle of his living room. The brownstone's living room looked smaller with the massive tree in the middle of it, the furniture pushed to the sides of the room and the floor covered with boxes and discarded tissue paper they'd have to pack away later. Dick stretched his arm out and tilted the angel with the tip of his finger. "There, perfect."

"I'm glad you're satisfied." She stared up at the bauble, her arms crossed loosely. She wouldn't give him another 'I told you so' because he wouldn't let her put the angel on the tree. But she knew, that he knew, she could have settled it perfectly on the first try.

It was the principle of the thing, she supposed. He'd put it on the tree his first Christmas he'd had with Mar'i's mom and it had become a tradition after that. Until he'd put Mar'i on his shoulders and let her do it. Then afterwards, he'd done it when she had decided she was too big for that kind of thing. Too mature. And then she really had been too big to do it.

As strong as her father was, it would be a little awkward to have your giant offspring sit on your shoulders.

Dick climbed down the ladder, the uneven feet wobbling less now that he had two hands to steady himself and the ladder. He pushed it to the side with his foot, somehow unworried about the wobbly feet. Mar'i rolled her eyes again and turned to push through the piles of tissue paper to find her favorite ornaments. They always put her mom's favorite on first. Then it was a free for all - mostly, anyway.

Mar'i's ornaments and Dick's ornaments sat in separate boxes for the most part, so did Kory's. Sometimes things got mixed up. Mar'i's ornaments ended up mixed in with Kory's or Dick's ornaments got mixed in with Mar'i's. Every once in a while they'd find an ornament no one had a claim to.

Her fingers finally alighted on the faceted surface of an ornament that her mother had bought for her first Christmas with the Titans. It was simple but it suited her mother's tastes perfectly, even thirty-something years later. The story went that she had been at a craft fair with Donna (what an old-fashioned thing to say) and she'd seen a woman selling snowflakes made out of beads. She knew what snow was but living in a tropical climate for most of her life, she had never known what snowflakes could look like. Kory had thought it was so beautiful that she needed to put it on the tree sitting in the middle of the Titans Tower rec room.

It wasn't a moving story but Mar'i liked it. She liked anything that reminded her of her mother.

She hung the ornament in the center of the tree as Dick watched, holding his breath for no good reason. The stared at it together. The light glinted off of the plastic beads.

Mar'i sniffed and swiped at her nose. It shouldn't have been as pretty as it was.

The moment was broken and the two of them went back to rifling through boxes, smiling as they picked up a memory here and there with the ornaments that had piled up through the years. The rustling of paper and sliding of boxes filled up the room with its own kind of conversation and as they moved around the tree, Dick and Mar'i didn't really need to talk.

There was a laugh here when they went for the same branch or ornament, a smile there as they remembered what something meant.

They hung the last ornament that would fit (there had to be a few dozen left in the boxes). A hanging frame of Kory that they had to shove to the back of the branch to keep it from falling and yet, it still bobbed up and down on the tree branch. It would be fine as long as no one jostled it.

Mar'i nudged a box with her toes. "Is that it?"

"Yeah, I guess it is." Dick looked around, his hands resting on his hips in his perpetual leader stance, and took in the room. It was an organized mess - Mar'i's boxes in one pile, Kory's boxes in another, his boxes on the couch. "You can always put the rest of yours on the tree in your apartment, right?"

Mar'i shrugged. "We didn't get a tree this year. Ibn and I have been gone too much to justify having one." True. But not quite true.

Her ornaments on a tree in a different living room felt wrong.

Dick nodded and started picking up the tissue paper that littered the hardwood.

"That happened to your mom and I more than once." He shoved the paper into the bottom of one of the boxes and kicked it to the side, sending it sliding across the floor. "We almost missed Christmas one year. You really can't take any holidays off when you're in our line of work, kiddo."

"Yeah, I know. I've been watching you my entire life, Dad."

He smiled as he folded up one of the empty boxes. "I know that you know, Starshine."

"Whatever - are you coming to Aunt Donna's on Christmas Eve?" She leaned down to re-organize what was left of the ornaments that hadn't been hung on the tree as her dad cleaned up. "She said she'd drag you here herself if you didn't come and went out as Red Robin instead."

"Guess that means I have to go, then." He flopped back onto the couch. "You know she's serious when she threatens me."

Mar'i snorted and stacked the rest of her mom's boxes. "Yeah, she threatens you every year and you still manage to check that police scanner you rigged up before disappearing for at least an hour."

Dick shrugged. "I can't help it."

"Just pretend Mom's going to walk through the door and you have to wait for her." She moved Kory's boxes to sit next to the couch.

Dick nodded. "Yeah, I could do that instead."


	4. Lies of Childhood

Her dad had been a pseudo-philosoph sometimes, spouting quotables like "when did the world become so gray?" - he'd tried to give her something to think on when she was growing up. And then the person in their life that held everything together had suddenly been gone and he'd stopped being a pseudo-philosoph who tried to make her think and he'd become a paranoid father who just wanted to keep her close to him. His hold on her tightened every time she tried to give herself space. Constricting her with grief and paranoia and a sense of fear that ran so deep in him after her mother's passing that she was sure it would never leave. It would only continue to manifest in the need to keep her as close to him as possible, which only ensured that she wanted to be as far away as physically possible.

Which meant she left home as soon as she could. The job on the Green couldn't have come at a better time. Alan Scott wanted heroes that could and would do whatever needed to be done. She'd do whatever needed to be done on the space station, taking guard positions mostly, sometimes transporting supplies, sometimes she was with the engineers. The Green wasn't just an energy construct anymore, like it had been in the beginning of its life. She had watched it grow from her home in New York over the course of her childhood, witnessing the glittering and translucent construct turn into something more solid and official. And what was more official than a space station run by the oldest GL on Earth?

She'd be lying if she said it wasn't some of the best days of her life. The station was a good place. After the war was over, she could do whatever she wanted in her off time. Borrow a cruiser and star-slide off into the Vegan system. Fly to Earth and see Avia or Ibn or Alura or anyone that she thought of while she spent her nights on the space station, staring out at the blue orb covered in swirling clouds and beautiful green.

But mostly, she spent her off time dodging calls from her dad. Even these days, with the war over and their relationship sort of patched up (as patched up as it could be), she was still avoiding him. Taking extra shifts on the Green, and when she did pick up, telling him that there was an emergency and no, she couldn't talk, sending messages through Bruce if she could. He was just trying to be too close, too soon.

Too soon after the war, too soon after their apologies. She needed to acclimate. Needed to be with him in increments. But he wanted to spend whole days with her, whole weeks. He wanted to take vacations that they had missed and wanted to have lunch every day or take her to dinner when she got home from the station or wanted Sunday breakfast every week. And she couldn't handle it. It was like she was a teenager all over again, suffocated by a loving and paranoid father. Looking at the outside world through a looking glass, knowing that she could never have what everyone else had because her family just happened to be visited by rare circumstance.

Which is probably how she ended up here, screaming as they tried to stop the world from imploding again. She hadn't asked him to be here, much less wanted him to be here but that was no different from any time between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three.

"Then go away!" Her shout echoed, cutting through the cacophony. And it hung between them. It settled there. Made its home in her dad's heart and burrowed as deep as it could.

She'd never meant to say it but it came out anyway. Her feelings had burst out of her chest and wounded him, just like they always did when they butted heads. They'd say something hurtful and know that they meant it in the moment and that made it worse. They meant it. They regretted it but they both knew that those barbs they flung had been meant to sting. Mar'i covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.

And then she was making excuses for herself and her dad was taking them in stride, asking her all the questions the child psychologist had asked when he mom had died. Why did she say that? What was that about? They were brushed aside as they rushed forward, trying to focus on a mission they never thought they'd have to face again. The end of the world rushed at them full force again and Mar'i had to wonder how many times in her life (she was only twenty-five) she'd have to face the end of the world or how many times she would be tasked with saving it because she had chosen this path in life.

She knew it wasn't supposed to be glamorous but come on, chasing down a childhood friend in the middle of a universe-wide crisis while trying to keep herself from exploding at her dad? Out of all the things she hadn't expected, that had to be the biggest surprise of her life. World ending? No big deal. Chasing down Randy while trying to keep herself and her dad together? What had she ever done to deserve that particular burden.

And she was scared. There was that.

Her mom had never been scared, not even when she was dying. And here Mar'i was, on the edge of the death of her world as she knew it, yelling at her dad and trying to pretend that there weren't tears rolling down her face and into the fur on Randy's neck as she tried to restrain him. And it led back to one thing.

The death of the universe, the death of her mother, the unimaginable, ill-advised promise that her dad had made her in (what he thought would be) a throwaway moment in her childhood. He promised her he wouldn't die. Promised her that her mother wouldn't die. And now they stood on the edge of the end of the world and that was the only thing she could think of - Dick promising her that he wouldn't die (couldn't die) and that they'd all be fine. And then she'd watched as her mother withered away. And she'd watched as her friends died on the battlefield. She'd felt the far away warmth of the atomic explosion and had known that she probably wouldn't see anyone she loved again. It'd been a stroke of luck - good or bad, take your pick - that she and Dick had survived. That Bruce and Ibn had survived.

Dick was trying to comfort her and she unleashed a starbolt. A bad idea. An awful thing to do to her father but she couldn't help it. She threw starbolt after starbolt as he tumbled over the hard floor of the Green, protesting as he went.

"You promised me you wouldn't die!" Another starbolt. "You can't keep a promise like that! No one can!" Her hands were buzzing with energy as she stood over him, their positions serving to further off-set his age with Mar'i set up as the younger, stronger version of him. His hand was raised to shield his face. And the energy left in her hands evaporated.

And he reached out to her.

And for the first time since their reconciliation, she took it.


End file.
